Dictated by visible full-form spirit materializations
through
the mediumship of William W. Aber

SCIENCE, SPIRITUALISM and THEOLOGY
PROF. WILLIAM DENTON

Friends, you must bear in mind that there is the widest possible distinction
between the facts witnessed by spiritual records or demonstrations which are
plain statements, and the interpretation which we have been accustomed to place
upon these facts that have been associated in our minds for ages, and the modes
of expression with which we have been clothed, as set forth by us.

And the conclusions be proved to which spiritual science or its phenomena
seem to point, then it is found at the most, to contradict some preconceived
notions which you have been used to read, or traditional modes which you have
accepted in interpreting it. We will say that even if the spiritualists were
convinced of inaccuracies as to some matters of detail, that of itself would no
more disprove the truth of essential matters revealed, than the inaccuracies
being detected in any other channel. The conclusion to which the course of all
scientific observation seems to tend, is that all the complex phenomena of your
world are due to simple, original causes which, however once set in motion, have
been working through progressive and well marked evolutionary stages from the
first nebulous condition to which you may trace primary matter up to a point
where all further evolution has been arrested. The nebulous matter out of which
this visible order of the universe was formed, has been the debris of former
organized worlds as astronomy now appears to indicate. The great facts which
alone are material to the purpose, are plainly and simply stated ; that the elements of which
your world and the people are composed, were once in a nebulous and disorganized
condition ; the controlling, intelligence called them into being first, then
placed them under the active operation of forces which evolved by successive
stages, the complex world that you have around you. All that you can do, or that
you ought legitimately to attempt, is to take the plain statements as facts
established on evidence of spiritual intercourse, and then draw the conclusions
which properly follow these statements with any other known facts which bear
upon this subject of investigation. The only conclusion that you can rationally
come to, is that Spiritualism is so essentially progressive that no student who
recognizes these necessary conditions, could at once reject the whole group of
facts and conclusions which form the province of any one study like theology
because they may seem at variance with the contusions of any other special
study, or of scientific thought. The most you can fairly argue in such a case is
to say : Here are facts which in different fields of thought seem to verify
different conclusions; and laws which on their own ground seem sufficiently
established; yet are difficult to reconcile with each other.

All that a fair mind can conclude is that the clue to a future life is
found, and you must leave the solution to spiritual forces, knowing that the
discovery of this fact may at any time supply this clue and guide you to this
law which may be found to harmonize with all other laws. And if this be so with
scientific progress, then to say that at the present stage of knowledge and
research some facts recently brought to light in the material world appear to
conflict with their conclusions, that have been hitherto accepted by the
theologians, is unwarrantable and illogical. No one unless he be the eeriest
charlatan, will say that Spiritualism has exhausted all the possible facts that may be discovered ; or that the laws which
spiritual science lays down, are so established that our research into Nature,
is perfect, and theology or science can never modify them. But again, we are met
with another current objection, and that is scientists in the ordinary
acceptation of the term, think they are so progressive and adding fresh facts to
its store of knowledge and enlarging the range of its investigation; while
Christian theology is not progressive, but remains constant to the system it has
taught for centuries. The facts which are its groundwork are those of a history
of events which happened at definite times long ago; or have been made known by
particular exponents of a divine message to man. Unless fresh facts happen of
the sort, or a future revelation is made bearing upon the subject, no progress
can from the nature of the case be looked for in theology. And as to any fresh
revelation, it would be going too far perhaps, to say that if truth has ever
been revealed, no further light ever can or will he given to man.

When one truth has been definitely established on facts fully ascertained, no
change is possible except in the direction of error. Reason and common sense are
the faculties by which knowledge is apprehended by the human mind, whether in
the material or spiritual world. Spiritualism is professedly communication from
another world not cognizable by human senses; which nevertheless, when once
communicated, are to be apprehended by the ordinary process of reasoning. If
therefore spiritual science is rightly understood, there could hardly be a
collision; for spiritual science begins where the other ends. Friends,
Spiritualism is the science which reason deduces from facts; and in building it
up, it is essential that the process of reasoning be followed. As in every other
science, we find that the whole is professedly built upon a basis of facts, and
consists of conclusions drawn from them. The existence of Spiritualism itself is a great fact; its history is a course of events linked together by cause and effect. There is indeed a more noticeably characteristic system as compared with any other religion of faith: and its basis is professedly a collection of facts. Spiritualism is no theory of life and death, like Plato's
and others; no system of the schools, no pious dream, but a knowledge of living
based upon facts and a life and a literature grouped around them. You must take
it as an admitted axiom, that any true science rests upon the basis of all known
facts, and that her conclusions are drawn by generalization from all particulars
that bear on any given point. Is it not perfectly clear that no observer, indeed
no group of observers in any time or place, can claim to observe or ascertain
all facts or phenomena which bear on this subject for himself or themselves, but
is bound to take the evidence of other competent observers ? To refuse to accord
this belief to such evidence when it tells of matters that have not come within
your own experience, argues no scientific spirit but the mere incredulity of
ignorance. Spiritual phenomena are demonstrated facts; they rest upon such
evidence as establish proof and must be admitted as sufficient evidence for all
we claim. To reject these facts as being contrary to ordinary experience, is
utterly unscientific. At any time, a scientific thinker, if satisfied of the
competence and credibility of other observers who bring fresh facts to his
knowledge, is bound to accept their testimony and marshal the added facts with
those already ascertained, even though they may be wholly unknown to himself. So
too, with regard to kindred objections that the spiritual evidence deals with,
are matters not cognizable by human faculties: phenomena of the spirit world of
which you know nothing because you have no means of observing its facts or laws,
of which therefore the scientific mind can take no account.

That objection is precisely the same as if a physician refused to take into
consideration any Spiritual phenomena on the ground that his science dealt with
the body and could take no cognizance of things of the spiritual world. Every
doctor knows or should know, that there are facts and laws of the spirit world
which little as they may be understood, and inexplicable by any material
science, are so real that he cannot disregard them. You must accept all that you
can learn about them, and take them into account as far as you are able. All
reason and experience and the universal observation of mankind teach you that
there is a series of phenomena observable in your world which are unexplainable
by any other source than by a spirit, a departed human being who once lived and
breathed, and had his being, and moving indeed, on a plane so different from
things cognizable by natural sense, that your faculties hardly can grasp them.
Now it is of the spheres in which these forces move, the material world in
which we tell you. If you only dealt with matters which ordinary experience
could observe, and the laws that human faculties could induce, it would be
wholly unnecessary; indeed as a divine disclosure, it would be a contradiction
in terms. The whole contention and claim of Spiritualism is that it reveals to
you facts and laws of another world by which you are affected in the highest of
all human concerns; but of which you have not yet sufficient experience to comprehend all of its wonderful yet strictly natural laws. This treats of the Spirit world which all human experience recognizes as lying about you; but no human senses or faculties can adequately grasp, that divine processes to tell you: and that in a properly scientific way, by the observation of competent witnesses, adding fresh facts to those which you can glean from your own experience—facts sufficient to establish a law about such phenomena which you could not arrive at by the unaided process of the human mind, from the paucity of
the data which comes within your observation in ordinary life. Therefore, it is
wholly wrong and unjust to try and sweep away the whole of Spiritualism as fraud
or delusion and to say that because its conclusions contradict some theories of
science, they must be either false or unknowable.

Spiritualism, as a divine order, professes to give the testimony of witnesses who have had the power of observing things not within ordinary ken. If the competence and credibility of witnesses be proved—which must be tested by the
same methods as you apply to the evidence of any fact or facts, then you are bound by the principles and in
the interests of all true science, to admit the facts, and the conclusions which
right reason draws from them. This is an instance to show that you cannot too strongly insist on pinning
down science to be true to her own principles. We have spoken of the antagonism
that seems to actuate science and theology in its attitude towards Spiritualism;
you must not forget that there is often a hostility shown by theologians towards
spiritualist quite unfounded and unreasonable. If you are careful to determine
the relation of Spiritualism to the subject there are no other branches of
scientific investigation which can supply the all vital question of life after
death. Take as an instance the research of Prof. Faraday; probably nothing in
modern times has been received with such a storm of disapproval by the religious
world as the publication of his theories. The whole existing human race has
sprung from one parent stem is a fact, of which for centuries provoked a smile
of incredulity from the spirit world. This has been proven by spirit intercourse
and research, and is as certain as any such position can be. Spiritualism
therefore, is itself a science, and must be judged according to its own subject-matter
and the evidence adduced on its own ground. The peculiarity in it
is that the facts on which it rests come within the scope of ordinary
observation, and are established for you by competent witnesses. So far it is
drawn out by human reason from these facts, and is unquestionably an element of
possible infallibility in its induction. And indeed, nothing is more noticeable
than the objections which are brought against the truth of Spiritualism. All the
old schools of philosophy were thus formed on the theories of some great
thinker, whose dicta were conducive to his disciples, and the facts of the
universe had to fit themselves in with the theory, or left out in the cold.
Have we not the task before us in these times, as heirs of all that human reason
and knowledge have gone through in the same task in matters revealed which
your generation of science has had in matters observed—to make use of the world
of fresh facts bearing upon material and spiritual life which the progress of
modern investigation has ascertained, and the improved methods of reasoning
which better acquaintance with Natural laws and thought has perfected, to go
carefully over the field of divine intelligence? This is a process covering a
wide range of thought, and requiring infinite care and pains, trained abilities
and very patient and minute investigations. Truth stands immovable like a vast
pyramid, a weighty structure based on the whole wide field of facts that form
its ground work, built up with care and pains in layers on layers of solid
reasoning that narrows up to the point where its conclusion may be grasped by
the finite intellect unalterable in its massive solidity by lapse of time or any
shock or rude assault. It is but error that is like the pyramid upside down—a
spreading superstructure reared on the narrow point of a single accepted theory,
or the insufficient base of an isolated group of facts, that cover but some few
points of the ground on which the structure professes to be built; the very emblem of instability which the first rude breath of
hostile criticism must upset, even as the pyramid of truth on its proper basis,
is the very emblem of stability as solid as the everlasting hills. It is a fact
that this has been one generating influence upon mankind with which nothing in
all history can be compared. And to be told that you must hand over Spiritualism
as a worn out superstition, only because the higher culture of the present day
will not take the pains to inquire into the basis on which it rests, is rather
preposterous! At least we feel inclined to say to this higher culture—Prove
your own ground, my friends—prove that the culture of tomorrow will not
demolish you as it has done with your brother of yesterday. If the higher
culture can prove its grounds, it will be found a real young giant that can
drive all creeds and churches out of its way, or if you dissect it, may you not
find that it is but a thin mask after all, behind which a little shivering
masquerades, and has played many characters, and has been hissed off the stage
in all? Indeed, the advocates of religion assume too much. They take it for
granted that the ground of their opponent's arguments have already been disposed
of and they offer absolutely nothing solid in the shape of counter proof. They
call mankind from the green pastures and living streams where they have fed in
peace and say: Come, my children, here you have no abiding place; all is
unsatisfying and vain : a gloom is over it which will make this fair and
pleasant view vanish from before your eyes, and the food you eat turns to ashes
between your teeth. They say: Come and see the fairer vision of better
pastures and clearer streams that they have to offer you. But when you walk up
to them, they are but a mirage ; and you find yourselves standing on the arid
sands of a desert, with the sky dark above your head and hungry and thirsty,
your soul faints within you. The most preposterous of all is the way in which
writers of different schools will take the phrases of Spiritual teaching, and
assume that all vital meaning has been extracted from them ; play with them as
with counters, and then assure you they are empty shells, and there never was a
kernel in them at all. Let us then turn to this special point: what is the
antagonism between Spiritualism and religion, and how far can the former assume
to supersede or set aside the latter? And at the outset we ask, what is
religion? No definition has yet been offered by its votaries, and perhaps you
shall find that if it were clearly drawn, any possible ground of conflict
between it and Spiritualism will be so materially narrowed
that sensible men will pay little regard to it.

And what do they mean by religion? It is not worth while to ask this, because
this is one of those terms which are on everybody's lips, and as no one ever
thinks what it really means, and its sense becomes most vague and indeterminate.
In such a case the only hope of arriving at a definite understanding is
to trace the history of its gradual use from that first usage in which you find
it current. Friends, be true to your own principles; and do not give us mere
fine spun theories as to what the cultus might do for humanity. Our facts are
strewn thickly over the whole world. Show us a single race of people who, to any
real extent, or over any fair period of trial, have been raised in the moral
scale and quickened to any true sense of a higher life by any religious
influence, save that of Spiritualism. But we do say without fear of
contradiction, that the only evidence, in any large scale, that has exercised
any really regenerating influence upon mankind, is to be found in Spiritualism.

What has ever ennobled the world of men, and emancipated it from the
thralldom of superstition and vice, like Spiritualism ! Further, the new life of
which this is the informing principle, is not to be reached by any religion; for it
is professedly based upon natural communication and influence. Spiritualism is
unquestionably the key that unlocks the door to another life. You claim that man
can only know what is cognizable by his senses or deducible by fair reasoning
from what his senses perceive. This does not in any way prove that there may not
be a whole world of which human senses are not cognizant, and laws equally
uniform in that world of which therefore, human faculties can know nothing
unless it be revealed by some communication from the spirit world, and of this,
competent evidence has been given.

If science can recognize matter and force, then its must recognize spiritual
phenomena because these are alone what your senses can perceive. And if you have
competent evidence from credible witnesses that such have been observed, then it
is utterly unscientific to reject their existence as impossible.

We therefore assert, there is a world around you not cognizable by the
senses, because not material, or at least, is of matter of imperceptible tenuity
and organized intelligence, peopling that world; there is nothing improbable in
the action of these intelligences called into the play of forces of which you
are not cognizant, to counteract those which form part of the observed order of
things. This is said to be impossible because it is contrary to the experience of
mankind. It may be contrary to the observed powers of men, for there is nothing
more clear than that if a law of Nature is known, you can predict with absolute
certainty what will be the result from given conditions, according to that law.
One of the recognized modes of verifying a Natural law is to supply the
conditions and predict the consequences, which may often be done with great
minuteness through whole chains of cause and effect. The gift of prophecy is
through a Natural law and has the power to predict a certain result, or a chain of
consequences resulting from the operation of higher spiritual forces than any
observed by human faculties; and is therefore Spiritual. But if these higher
laws or forces were to be brought within the range of your observation, as they
are now known to you only through the evidence of witnesses, they would be
recognized as spiritual powers. Spiritualism is unquestionably based upon facts
by communication or some ocular demonstration which is expressly stated to be
the germ of a new life, which is set before you as its object. This is
therefore, something essentially different from, and above anything that
religion can supply.

We claim that there is nothing impossible or even
improbable in the world of spirit; and that communication itself or the
evidence; we cannot see from the communications and the established evidence; or
the evidence by which it is established that should necessarily differ with
anything that science can legitimately claim as her province. It is surely worth
while in a matter of such importance, to see what is the value of the evidence
to which Divine Law itself appeals; and to inquire if there is not abundant
testimony to the truth of Spiritual phenomena on their own ground, within the
experience of the world, in comparison with which any apparent discrepancies or
contradictions that may be gathered against it from other grounds, are
absolutely unimportant. We challenge any man to see in its true light what
Spiritualism really claims to be; to weigh carefully what it professes to
reveal: and verify the grounds on which it claims our assent. In the great
failure of humanity which all experience confesses it the fact apparent or not,
that just so far as men do live in accordance with the laws that govern and
control and realize the highest, the best life and purest happiness that
humanity is capable of and according as they fall away from, or violate the
laws, so they are the prey of vile affections and hateful lusts, and the corruption that is in
the world through lust that makes the life of men a chaos and a wreck? And amid
that general chaos and wreck of human life, is it a fact or not, that the
highest and best life ever known has been the Spiritualist ideal; so that if
that ideal could be made wholly true for all humanity, the world would
regenerate to new life, and the sin of the world would be taken away? Is it not
a fact that the only power which has ever been able to do anything towards
regenerating human nature and saving the world from its inherent corruption, is
Spiritualism? Is it not true that Spiritualism has sown the seed of divine
teaching, and the message of revealed truth that stands above all other, and has
developed into a power which nothing else can compare? Is it not a fact that
Spiritualism is rapidly becoming the dominant power on your earth and among the
people ?

The radical difference between Spiritualism and other religions is that the
aim which it sets before it is not the stimulating a sense of fear and scruple
of conscience, or the mere sentiment of worship alone; but a new life, revealed
as the only perfect life of earth, in communion with the unseen forces of the
spirit world by actual communication. You have been told that there is a future
life which is revealed, and you can, and have had the absolute proof to offer:
for the only proof is demonstrative facts through the death of the body. You
know that you shall not die. You know you have that within you that of which
the death of the body is not the end. You see a gradual development from lower
to higher forms of life—one eternal process moving on, by which higher and
higher faculties are developed in successive organisms, and a gradual evolution
of higher powers in the highest organisms to the very hour of death. Are you
then to believe in the sudden and absolute reversal of all laws of evolution, and the abrogation of any design
in existence—that these highest faculties are capable of no further
development, and the whole course of nature falls shattered in blank
annihilation? And the analogy is proof almost irresistible, that the material
and the spiritual world are all the work of one Creative Mind which was taught
mankind centuries ago; and this law shall not be broken. We have revealed the
creation of the race, with special faculties to fulfill a declared purpose, as
intelligent agents of Nature's laws, a law of the moral world declared, and a
spiritual force revealed. In no case is any truth contradicted: but the observed
facts of human existence are shown to be explained by a higher law and force
that any you have faculties to ascertain, and which are therefore to us
natural.

But these forces are ruled by exactly the same laws to which observed
uniformity of natural causes and effects are observed. Spiritualism asserts the
existence of a future world, of which it states the conditions and laws. The
absolute proof is only to be reached by living facts. We also assert a spiritual
life and the conditions and laws to be the same, only in a different stage of
development; man makes or mars the happiness and goodness of his fellowmen, and
as you look around the world you see in that all the foundations of the world
are out of course; sin and self interest marring all the order and progress of
mankind. You see a great striving and yearning in the heart of man for some
perfect social order, that grows stronger as knowledge increasing, enabling men
to see more and more clearly what might be and in what a contrast it stands to
what is a great upheaving and mighty surging; each knot of men fancying that
they have some panacea for the ills of mankind, and forcing it on their fellows.
Where can such dreams be realized save in the community of interests by which
all who are Spiritualists are bound to prefer each the other's good in one
universal brotherhood of mutual helpfulness? Each one filling up that which is
behind of the suffering and self sacrifice. And if Spiritualism thus proved to
be the only true philosophy of life, so far as you can verify it, the one
science that is found to harmonize all phenomena of man's higher nature which
come within your observation and experience, are you not bound to accept it when
it teaches of other phases and developments of man's life which are as yet
beyond your observation, and of which therefore, your faculties can ascertain
nothing, save so far as may be revealed by the witness of those who have been
admitted behind the veil? The phenomena of life present the most subtle
mysteries that can engage the thoughts of men ; yet of the most real, deep
interest.

It is a force acting on matter that you see and feel, of which you are made,
you can know nothing so ethereal and impalpable as it, though so terribly real.
These are subtle forces, which you can perceive only through its action upon
matter, but most real. Do not all observed phenomena point to the conclusion
that it is independent of the material world, and must therefore be presumed in
its higher developments to have a separate existence of its own, in another
world of which your faculties as yet have no cognizances ? But as the laws of
that higher life have been revealed on credible evidence, and shown to be such
as harmonize with all experience so far as you can trace and test its working,
are you not bound as reasonable men to accept the evidence as to these further
phases of life, which are distracted, to be possible for the future without
dependence upon matter, such as your bodies are made of? The higher life is
declared to be subject to strict and uniform laws revealed by messages from the
unseen world that made the force and ordained its laws, which have been verified
with absolute fidelity by all subsequent experience and observation of mankind. Now, friends, we
hope we have made Spiritual philosophy plain to all and we ask, can you find, or
can you cite us to any science or religion that can offer the proofs and
demonstrated facts other than Spiritualism? In a few years the world will know
that Spiritualism is the only religion that is able to show absolute proof for
its claims!